Theater Review: Reagle puts on a sassy South Pacific’

Friday

Jun 20, 2014 at 12:50 PMJun 20, 2014 at 12:56 PM

By David Brooks AndrewsWicked Local Arts Correspondent

Rodgers and Hammerstein's classic musical "South Pacific" obviously takes us back in time but also feels surprisingly contemporary in some ways. If the show is well done - as it is in the hands of Waltham's Reagle Music Theatre - it continues to provide for an enjoyable and moving journey.This, of course, is the story of Ensign Nellie Forbush, a young Navy nurse, and Emile de Becque, a middle-aged French plantation owner, who fall in love on a South Pacific Island during World War II, in spite of all of their differences.He's a cultured Frenchman with shelves filled with books by great French writers. She studied enough French in school to conjugate verbs but not read French novels. She's from Little Rock (or Small Rock, as Emile calls it), Arkansas. And Katie Clark, playing Nellie, who admits to being a hick, gives her a truly hick accent.It's the issues of love in Reagle's show that have a contemporary ring. Opposites often attract, as they do with Nellie and Emile, but are their differences too great to sustain a marriage? This is what they wonder as they sing the charming number "Twin Soliloquies," without either of them realizing just how deep their differences ultimately run, all the way to the volatile issue of race.But for the moment everything seems possible, as Peter S. Adams in the role of Emile sings the lush, romantic song "Some Enchanted Evening." Adams is both the anchor and driving force of this production with his stunningly beautiful voice that is rich and commanding and with his centered presence, full of conviction. When he sings, "Once you have found her, never let her go," you're fully with him in his undaunted pursuit of Nellie.Reagle has a well-deserved reputation for vigorous crowd scenes, with strong dancers and ensemble singers. And they live up to it in this show as the Seabees show us the raucous, testosterone-driven end of the island with the help of two wheeler-dealers, Luther Billis (Aaron Dore) and Bloody Mary (Lydia Gaston).Bloody Mary is a Tonkinese Mother Courage who tries to make financial hay of the war by selling grass skirts and what she claims are shrunken human heads to the sailors to send home to their gals back in the States. Obviously, there's something Bloody Mary doesn't quite understand about their American girlfriends! Gaston brings tremendous energy to Bloody Mary, and a wild, ragged, in-your-face sexiness as she tries to persuade the men to buy her goods.Dore and his Seabees colleagues sing a very funny "There is Nothin' Like a Dame." And Gaston responds with a haunting "Bali Ha'i," as if she is the voice of the island itself, while a painted scrim of the distant, mysterious island with two volcanoes appears.One of the highlights of the show, as it should be, is the wonderful number "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair," that Nellie and the nurses sing. Clark is bursting with spunk and sassiness as she sings it and literally washes her hair in a semi-private outdoor shower stall. The ensemble of nurses is delightful as they put on lively dance moves and join her in the song.What feels so contemporary is the fickleness of Nellie's strong convictions when she bumps into Emile immediately after the song and suddenly doesn't want him out of her hair at all. And soon Clark is singing "I'm as corny as Kansas in August. … I'm in love with a wonderful guy," as she dances with the straw hat he has left behind, and feels it all deeply.R. Glen Michell gives Captain George Brackett a military toughness yet with a heart underneath it as he plans a secret and dangerous mission involving Lt. Joseph Cable (Mark Linehan) and Emile, who initially refuses.When Cable finally relents to visiting Bali Ha'i, Bloody Mary presents him with her daughter, Liat (the beautiful Samantha Ma). Their lovemaking is suggested by an exquisite dance performed by Linehan and Ma.The racism that threatens to undermine Nellie's love for Emile, who has children by a former Polynesian wife, as well as Cable's love for the Tokinese Liat, definitely seems of an earlier era, not that we don't have our own aggressive forms of racism today. One can't help but admire Rodgers and Hammerstein, as well as Joshua Logan who co-wrote the book, adapted from James A. Michener's "Tales of the South Pacific," for challenging the racism of the day, only four years after the end of World War II.Director David Hugo did a good job of bringing life out of the cast and melding their performance. The scenery, rented from Prather Entertainment Group, very much gives the feeling of the South Pacific during World War II with Emile's shuttered plantation home, a painted backdrop of ocean and beach, and a humorous banner for the Thanksgiving Follies that features buxom beauties, one of them riding a bomb that has been dropped."South Pacific"WHEN: Through June 22WHERE: Reagle Music Theatre of Greater Boston, 617 Lexington Street, WalthamTICKETS: $35 to $63INFO: 781-891-5600; www.reaglemusictheatre.com

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